Dust on the Sea (1999)

by Reeman, Douglas

  Blackwood tried to accept it. It happened in war; it was happening all the time. Only yesterday he had sent a corporal home to Liverpool, where his entire family had died in an air raid. His father had given everything to the Corps, even his health; he had never fully recovered from his wounds. He had been retired prematurely, but when war had erupted once more across Europe he had been determined to serve again. Any bitterness at having been rejected by the life he had loved had remained hidden; he had never offered anything but support and encouragement to his son. And now, characteristically helping others, he was gone.

  Vaughan said, ‘I can fix two weeks’ leave for you. That’s all. Arrange things . . . I’m not doing this very well, am I?’

  Blackwood looked across at the men with whom he had been working, recalling something he had once heard his father say. It’s what we are. What we do.

  ‘I think I knew, sir.’ He faced him. ‘We were always very close, even more so after my mother died.’ He smiled, and afterwards Vaughan thought he had looked exactly like Jonathan Blackwood in those distant, terrible days.

  Another appointment, then. Some dangerous mission at the end of it, like all those others. Men following the tradition, and the family name. It was a lot to carry.

  ‘I hope I can live up to your faith, sir.’ Vaughan had to turn away. He was not often moved, but Michael Blackwood had just unwittingly repeated that other young Blackwood’s words, before the last great sacrifice on the Somme.

  He said gruffly, ‘My aide’ll hack through the red tape. You can fly south with me. I can give you a couple of hours.’

  Blackwood stared through the drizzle. The marines were relaxing now, trying to light their cigarettes.

  ‘I shall be ready, sir.’

  So easily said. He saluted as the major-general strode away, followed by the lieutenant-colonel and his staff.

  He peered at his watch, and saw the rain on his wrist. The skin was still tanned despite the months since he had returned from the smoke and flames of Rangoon, and the Japanese domination of Malaya and Burma.

  He pushed the memories away and walked down to meet his sergeant.

  What we are. What we do. It sounded like the perfect epitaph.

  The sergeant’s name was Tom Paget, and he had been with Blackwood when they had fired the oil storage tanks south of Rangoon to prevent their capture by the advancing Japanese. He had proved his worth time and time again, and should have got a medal for what he had done; perhaps they all should. He had been made up to sergeant, and looking at him now in the drizzle and biting air, it was hard to imagine him ever being anything else.

  Blackwood said, ‘You can fall them out now. I’ll be leaving you in charge until a replacement arrives.’ Then, ‘They did well today.’

  Paget watched him impassively. ‘I hear you’ve been promoted, sir. Good show! I’ve told the lads.’

  There was no point in asking how he knew. This was the Corps, the family. There was rarely such a thing as a secret for long.

  ‘I have to go south. My father has just died. An air raid.’ Short, dry sentences. It was as though his mind was still rejecting it. His father. Always interested when he went on leave, even though he must have ached to be back in the service himself. He thought suddenly of the bluff, outspoken major-general. Vaughan had been a frequent visitor to the rambling house at Hawks Hill. Blackwood had been in awe of him at first, but had come to view the friendship between him and Jonathan Blackwood as something very special, something which, in a way, he was part of. And then the visits had grown less frequent, and he thought he could understand why. Vaughan had served under Jonathan Blackwood and was perhaps embarrassed, even ashamed, that on every return he seemed to have gained some better appointment, or yet another promotion.

  Paget was saying, ‘I’m very sorry, sir. I never knew him, of course, but they always spoke so well of him.’ He hesitated, the old training acting like a warning. ‘Afterwards, sir . . .’

  Afterwards. It said it all. ‘I shall be taking a new posting. I think the Royal Marine Commandos are making a big impression higher up!’

  The sergeant fell into step beside him. ‘I’d like to come along, if you need a good N.C.O., sir.’ He smiled, for the first time. ‘My old dad always said that an officer was only as good as his sergeant!’

  They laughed, Blackwood rather surprised that he could.

  All those years he had felt somehow guided, and secure. Perhaps that was why he had avoided the more usual seagoing appointments that fell to the Royals. In Burma he had stood alone, and had relied on his own skills and resources to survive, and to lead.

  Afterwards. It would be a difficult two weeks, he thought.

  They shook hands, and Blackwood said, ‘You’ll be the first to know.’ Then they saluted, formally. It was what made them different. At sea or in the desert, or even here, in the bleak Scottish Highlands, they were Royal Marines.

  Michael Blackwood walked across the high-ceilinged room and gazed out of the window. The house was huge, too large by modern standards, but it was the only home he had ever known. The rain had stopped, and he saw the familiar line of trees, leafless now, and beckoning to the high copse like black spectres.

  Hawks Hill had been originally a fortified Tudor farmhouse, complete with moat, which had been altered and enlarged over the years since it was bought by Major-General Samuel Blackwood. He was always described in the old diaries as ‘the last soldier’. After him, for no reason that Blackwood had ever discovered, all had entered the Corps.

  It was a house full of memories, fine paintings depicting battles ranging from The Saintes to Trafalgar, from the Crimea to Jutland. There were none portraying the Royal Marines at Gallipoli and Flanders. Like so many things in this house, he thought, too many painful reminders.

  He could see the old moat in the distance, or what remained of it. Hawks Hill had been used as a hospital for officers in the Great War, and his mother, the daughter of a local doctor, had worked here, teaching young men who had been blinded to read with their fingers, and not to reject the world they had once believed in.

  The moat had all but collapsed, but it was still a haven for geese and ducks, gulls, too, at this time of year. Hawks Hill estate was only twenty miles north of Portsmouth, and some seven miles from Winchester. The local village was Alresford; he had glimpsed it when he had arrived, and had been surprised to see so many uniforms in the narrow lanes where he had played as a child.

  He touched the long blackout curtains beside the window. Cold and dusty, they seemed so alien in this peaceful countryside. But even here they could see the fires in the sky when Portsmouth was attacked night after night, and there was an anti-aircraft battery in one of the fields.

  Such a big house; it even sounded empty when he moved across to another window. Between the wars life had been difficult on the estate, so it seemed strange that things were picking up again. With severe rationing of almost everything, even the country’s smallest cabbage patches were playing their part. His father’s enthusiasm for the estate, short of young men though it was, had made a real difference. The thought touched him like the tip of a bayonet. The funeral was tomorrow, in Alresford. After that it would be up to the lawyers, although there had already been some mention of the Ministry of Food, which was keen to expand the growth of local farms and smallholdings, backed up, apparently, by extra labour from Italian prisoners of war. It was almost unnerving to accept that he might be sent to kill Italians, while their relatives were working here at Hawks Hill.

  He heard steps outside the room and turned as the girl entered, and stood looking at him in silence. Perhaps she, too, needed to remember.

  Diane Blackwood was twenty-one years old, with dark chestnut hair and eyes almost the same as his. Even a total stranger would know them to be brother and sister.

  She wore a pair of jodhpurs and a thick sheepskin jacket. Despite the mud on her boots and her windblown hair she looked, as usual, in control. And beautiful. As their moth
er had looked, as she must have been when she had visited this house for the first time.

  She walked over to him and touched his face. Her fingers were cold.

  ‘Remembering, Mike?’ She tossed the hair from her eyes, as he had seen her do a million times. ‘It’s so good to have you here. That you could come. Otherwise . . .’

  ‘It always gets me. When I’m away I can’t wait to see it . . .’

  ‘And now you’re here, you can’t wait to leave!’ She smiled, but it only made her look sad. ‘Dear Mike. I worried about how you’d take the news. We all did. Aunt May came at once – she’s been a real brick.’

  He said hesitantly, ‘There’ll be a few of his old chums there tomorrow.’

  ‘I thought there would be. It’s Armistice Day too, do you realise that? The war to end all wars.’ She spread her hands as if to embrace him and the whole house. ‘And here we are!’

  He put his arm round her and felt her tremble. He had never thought of her like this, as an attractive, vulnerable woman, albeit a young one, who would soon have to cope alone. She was his sister, someone taken for granted. Like his father. Like this house.

  She said suddenly, ‘You’re not to worry. You’re so precious to me . . . I want you to be careful all the time. I heard about some of the things you had to do in Burma, covering the withdrawal.’

  ‘Withdrawal? It was nearly a bloody rout, believe me!’ Then he took her arm. ‘Sorry. It gets to me sometimes. And coming back here like this . . .’ He could not go on.

  ‘See? You’re still the little rebel, despite the uniform!’

  They laughed at one another, and for an instant life came back to the house.

  Captain Mike Blackwood thrust his hands deeper into his greatcoat pockets and tried to settle more comfortably in one corner of the compartment. The train, with extra carriages attached, was packed, mostly with servicemen returning from leave, and others, noticeably noisier, about to begin theirs.

  And it was slow, so slow. He half-listened to the wheels on the track, clack-clack . . . clack-clack. It sounded like a walking pace. The compartment was illuminated by a faint blue light, only strong enough to reveal his breath in the cold air, and it was full, mostly with army officers who were either feigning sleep or genuinely too weary to talk to one another. One woman sat directly opposite him, a young W.A.A.F. officer, her legs pale in the darkness, her eyes shut, although she occasionally consulted her watch or glanced at the door. She probably needed to go to the toilet, but could not face clambering over the bodies squatting in the corridor or sitting on kit bags and suitcases. It might even be occupied when she got there: a small card game, going on in rare privacy.

  It was too dark to see out of the window, even if there had been no netting glued across it. He had seen it when he had boarded the train, and the little printed notice explaining that the netting was there to protect passengers from flying glass in the event of an air attack, and apologising for any inconvenience.

  Nevertheless, someone had cut away part of it with a knife, and had written neatly underneath, Thank you for your information/ But I can’t see the fucking station! Good handwriting, too. He half-smiled. But then, this was a First Class compartment, for officers only!

  His head lolled against the damp headrest as he thought of his leave. Shorter than he had expected, and yet with moments, incidents standing out, as if he had been a spectator. Someone else.

  Clack-clack . . . clack-clack.

  The sounds changed, and he guessed they were dragging through yet another station.

  Everything had seemed so different. Even when he had seen himself for the first time with his new rank, the three pips on either shoulder, it had been like a stranger’s reflection. He could feel nothing, give nothing, only a numbness, an emptiness, which had made him seem even more like an onlooker.

  Old Harry Payne had been there. Payne was his father’s attendant, orderly and friend; he had been with Jonathan Blackwood throughout that other war, had been with him when he had been so grievously wounded, and had watched over him ever since. He and his wife had a cottage on the estate. Odd job man, manager, like most marines he could do almost everything. Older now, but still straight-backed, as he had been that day in the church, his eyes far away as others had read and spoken of the man they had all known.

  Blackwood recalled how his father had resisted the use of a walking stick for as long as he could; he had hated it. A constant reminder, a taunt. The wounds to his back and leg had weakened the muscles, but he had always squared his shoulders and smiled a greeting, even when his eyes bared the lie.

  That was the cruel irony of it, he thought, after all he had given and done. Out of the blue, he had received an offer of a posting. Out of the blue. With his own rank, back in the life he had yearned for. It had not been much, an appointment to the Royal Marines Department of Recruiting. Not much . . . but when Harry Payne had described it Blackwood could have been there with him. His father had been in Plymouth to accept the job. Fate had decided otherwise, in the form of a stick of bombs, a common enough occurence in that battered naval port. There had been people trapped in a burning house and Colonel Jonathan, ‘Jono’, Blackwood had acted without hesitation. Then the building had collapsed. There had been nothing anyone could have done. They said.

  He thought again of the funeral. Every pew in the small church filled, the vicar grave-faced in the presence of so many visitors, senior officers, and grey-haired veterans from another war. Listening, remembering. Sharing.

  Vaughan had been there also, although no one had seen him arrive or leave. It was his way of showing what their friendship had meant to him.

  A lot of quiet condolences and firm handshakes . . . a few of the local women sobbing, if not for the man then for the name, the family which had been part of their lives for so long. . . .

  One old boy wearing a poppy above his medals had said, ‘A hard path to follow, Captain Blackwood!’

  Hard? It was impossible. Like the sermon, it was for the family, not the man. Two Victoria Crosses, and God knew how many other decorations. Africa, China, the North Sea and the Atlantic, wherever the world’s greatest navy had shown its flag. Impossible.

  Someone had reached the window and lowered it slightly, and the cold air was refreshing.

  The anonymous shape muttered, ‘Another bloody raid, by the look of it!’

  Before he pulled at the strap again Blackwood saw the distant flashes in the sky, like tiny stars. Flak. Probably a solitary hit-and-run raider, without much chance of hitting anything.

  The W.A.A.F. officer stood up suddenly, and then staggered as the train gathered speed again. She fell with one hand on Blackwood’s knee, and he could smell her nearness, perhaps only soap, but in these dull, damp surroundings it was like perfume. She stammered something in apology and then he heard her dragging the corridor door open. There were a few sleepy remarks and nothing more, but she would know what they were thinking. For her sake, he hoped that the card school had broken up.

  He tried to think clearly. London, then. Why not Eastney Barracks, or Stonehouse at Plymouth? He wondered if the general public understood, the ordinary people who faced the rigours of rationing and shortages every day, and the unending dread of receiving one of those hated telegrams. We regret to inform you that your husband, son, lover . . . It never stopped, even in small places like Alresford. They clung to optimistic reports in the newspapers or on the cinema newsreels, grinning soldiers giving a thumbs-up to the camera, Spitfires performing a Victory Roll after another clash over southern England. Propaganda, part of the myth? It was all they had.

  He considered the navy as it had been when he had joined his first ship, all the great names, as familiar to the public as to the men who served and later died in them. Royal Oak and Courageous, and the world’s largest warship in her day, Hood, the nation’s darling; Repulse and Prince of Wales, trusted symbols of power and invincibility. Now gone, wiped out as if they had never been. Even the aircraft car
rier Ark Royal, the luckiest ship in the fleet, claimed as a prize so many times by the German propaganda machine, had finally been torpedoed and sunk by a U-Boat off Gibraltar. Her famous luck had, at last, run out.

  Such awesome losses set against the smaller, little-known operations of the commandos and other special services, the ‘cloak-and-dagger brigade’, might have broken the morale of the nation. But it had not broken.

  There were groans and protests as the door slid open again. It was the ticket inspector, a torch in one hand.

  ‘Waterloo in ’alf an ’our, gents!’

  Blackwood leaned back as the W.A.A.F. officer returned to her seat. She murmured, ‘Thank you.’ She sounded relieved, he thought.

  The door banged shut again. He remembered leaning from this carriage window, and looked at it now. He had leaned out to touch his sister’s face, and to kiss her. He had been aware of her anxiety, for him, not for herself. Some hurrying soldiers had whistled. Lucky sod. Bloody officer – it’s all right for some. And so on.

  The last running figures, the final good-byes; so much to say in so short a time, and no words to offer.

  She had held him, staring up at him. ‘I didn’t want to worry you, Mike. Spoil things.’

  There had been the shrill of a whistle. The train, this train, had given a jerk.

  She had clung to him, keeping pace with the carriage. ‘I passed my medical. My papers came through.’

  ‘Medical? Papers?’ He must have sounded stupid.

  She had been dragged away from him, her eyes filling her face.

  ‘I’m joining up, Mike!’

  Even then, at the moment of separation, he had known its importance to her.

  He had shouted, ‘I love you, Diane! We’ll show them!’

  The rest had been lost in the din and the smoke from a passing goods train. Show whom? Did she really understand?

  He had sat down, and had seen his fellow passengers avert their faces. Only the W.A.A.F. officer had looked at him, with what he thought was a reminiscent pain in her eyes.

  Maybe he was not feeling the full effect of it yet, like the funeral service, and the two Royal Marine buglers who had sounded the Last Post afterwards. Part of something else. Something he could never be.